Court allows ED to seek details of Nirav Modi’s overseas assets
MUMBAI: A special court on Monday approved the Enforcement Directorate’s request to issue a letter rogatory to six countries in the Punjab National Bank fraud case.
“The LR (letter rogatory) request is for the purpose of identification and seizures of proceeds of crime and collecting documents, which are required in connection with the investigations under PMLA,” said special public prosecutor Hiten Venegaonkar, who appeared on behalf of the investigative agency.
A letter rogatory is a formal request from a court to a foreign court for judicial assistance.
In the application copy, which has been reviewed by Mint, the investigative agency alleged that firms related to Nirav Modi, the man at the centre of the ₹11,400crore scam, have siphoned off ₹6,498 crore of banking funds and these were further laundered.
“The accused generated huge proceeds of crime amounting to ₹6,498 crore, which had been siphoned off by them and thereby laundered and amalgamated in mainstream financial system to project it as untainted property,” ED said in its application to the special court, set up under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
ED suspects that some parts of the funds could have been laundered and parked in Hong Kong, the US, the UK, the UAE, South Africa and Singapore.
“He (Nirav Modi) spread his business operations in various countries. He had apparently got issued multiple high value Letters of Undertaking (Lous) in favour of his firms/companies from Punjab National Bank, which resulted in disbursement of funds as per the SWIFT messages sent by PNB,” ED said in the application copy.
SWIFT stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.
According to public records with the Registrar of Companies (ROC), Firestar International Ltd has 48 subsidiaries. Four of these are based in India.
Meanwhile, CBI issued summons to Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi to appear on Monday, but in an emailed reply they said they cannot appear as their passports have been suspended, said the ED official. NEWDELHI/MUMBAI: Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sleuths probing the multi-billion rupee fraud at Punjab National Bank on Monday questioned three general managers (GMS) and the auditors of the bank, while continuing to interrogate its executive director KV Brahmaji Rao for the third day.
“Three GMS of PNB are being questioned in relation to the bank’s international banking division and treasury division. The International banking division gets the daily report of all credit and debit transactions of the nostro accounts. We are probing to see if they were aware of such huge credits and debits,” said a senior CBI official, on condition of anonymity. The official declined to name the three bankers.a Nostro account is an account that a bank holds in a foreign currency in another bank.
On Saturday, the agency turned up the heat on the PNB’S top brass, when it started questioning the bank’s managing director and chief executive Sunil Mehta, and executive director Brahmaji Rao in Mumbai.
The agency confirmed that Rao, who has been the executive director since January 2014, was quizzed “in connection with the Letters of Undertaking (LOU) issued to Nirav Modi,” the main suspect in the ₹11,400 crore fraud case.
PNB did not respond to emails seeking a response. “Investigation is underway in all the serious bank fraud cases registered by CBI recently. The director of CBI Alok Verma has directed officers
THE AGENCY CONTINUED TO INTERROGATE PNB’S EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
K V BRAHMAJI RAO
FOR THE THIRD DAY
in charge of these investigations to take all necessary steps to ensure that the bank fraud cases are concluded within a given time-frame,” CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal said on Monday.
The agency also recovered some documents last week from the Mumbai office of law firm Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas in connection with the fraud, two people familiar with developments confirmed.
“When Nirav Modi’s premises were searched last week, it was found that there were certain documents of huge importance at the law firm. Those documents were recovered last week itself,” said the senior CBI official cited earlier.
According to the person cited above, the law firm was advising a Modi-owned company a few weeks before the scam was unearthed but that the law firm had terminated the assignment the moment the fraud was discovered.